Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

Ayanadi cocked a bushy eyebrow. “They were all students, except Briggs, who had recently earned his doctorate and was teaching part-time. Briggs couldn’t stay on, of course. He didn’t help himself with his refusal to cooperate. And his personality didn’t lend itself to the support of allies.”

“If these trials were going on in the building, how did he manage to keep it secret?”

“No. His research here was innocuous, camouflage for the real work he was conducting in the Research Triangle. He never divulged the real location.”

“Surely the cops found the lab?” Despite CRO’s involvement, Mark had never heard a mention of the tragedy within the corporation. No surprise there.

“As I said, this was hush-hush. No one looked because no one wanted to see.”

Mark did a quick calculation in his head. That would have been nearly two years before he met Alexis. And, despite her generally positive demeanor, at times a shadow crossed her face as if doom had skirted past without her fully recognizing it. Like most young married couples, they’d been more interested in their future together than the mistakes and secrets of their individual pasts.

“These other…subjects. What happened to them?”

The professor shook his head. “I don’t recall all the names, but I distinctly remember Wendy Leng, because she later joined our art faculty.”

Wendy. Lex’s friend. And they never mentioned the trials…

Wendy had married a man named Roland, who had been in school with the two of them. He and Alexis had attended the wedding, where Roland had gotten embarrassingly drunk and made a fool of himself. Mark wondered who else among his wife’s friends had been involved, and how much that friendship was built around a shared secret.

“One last question, Doctor. Was CRO backing Briggs at the time?”

Dr. Ayanadi stared at the periodic chart on the wall, as if he could rearrange the elements and structure the world into something good, whole, and sane. “CRO has always been a generous benefactor of our program, Mark. A relationship we all hope to continue.”

Mark tapped the counter on his way to the door. “No one looks because no one wants to see, right?”

Kleingarten held the little orange bottle of pills about six inches out of Anita Molkesky’s reach. The hunger in her eyes was unmistakable. He’d handled his share of drugged-out hookers, and when the need sunk in its teeth, they would do anything for a fix.

Anything.

This Briggs guy was on to something.

“You know you need it, honey,” he said.

“I need it,” she murmured.

She was sitting on the bed like she knew her way around it. She looked a little rougher than she had in the waffle house, just before he’d crashed the car into it. Briggs had called the collision a “trigger” and said it would kick in the necessary adrenalin to juice her brain. Kleingarten had cut him off before Briggs launched into a lecture, but he understood the basic idea. He knew plenty about drugs and hookers.

The only thing he couldn’t understand was why Briggs had gone for the Slant when this gooey candy on the hoof was available. Sure, she’d had some work done, and those melons were inflated by at least two letter sizes, but she looked like she was primed for partying.

He’d picked her up outside the hospital after her appointment with just a few well-chosen words. He’d use them again if he had to.

“Okay, Daddy will fix you up, but I just need you to do one thing for me, okay?”

She nodded. One thing was easy.

Kleingarten looked around the motel room. It was a lot like the one in Cincinnati where he’d killed that hooker while Roland Doyle was in sand land-cheap paneling, a chipped dresser, a single lamppost, and an EZ chair that, despite its obvious age, had no ass print in the seat. Nobody came to motel rooms to sit around in chairs.

He pulled the digital tape recorder from his pocket. He thought about playing with her a little, but the doc had said the recording was an important part of the job. In fact, it pretty much was the job. The rest was bonus.

“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked, her tone flat, like she couldn’t care less one way or another.

“Maybe,” he said, with equal ambivalence. She was taking the fun out of it.

He held the recorder out and hit the button so the red light came on. It was a basic Sony model, but solid, and it would record for a week if he needed it to. He didn’t think he’d need it.

“Here’s what you say, Anita. You say, ‘Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.’”

“But I’m not in the Monkey House. I’m in a motel room.”

He wondered if she’d been hitting other stuff besides Briggs’s happy pills. Maybe a barbiturate or oxy. He didn’t know how the Halcyon would react with other drugs, but he figured it wasn’t his problem.

“Take two. Say ‘Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House,’ only say it like you’re scared. Like in a panic.”

“I was an actress.”

“Yeah, I bet. Weren’t you with George Clooney in that, whatsit, the Ocean’s Fifteen?”

“No, but I met him once.”

One thing about human nature, you gave somebody a chance to brag and they forgot all about their problems for a second. Kleingarten shook the bottle to bring her back around.

“Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”

She closed her eyes, maybe channeling Marilyn Monroe. “Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”

“Not bad, but a little more energy. You sound like you’re getting your nails done.” Kleingarten cut the recording so he wouldn’t have to edit too much later. “Picture the scene. This crazy guy has you locked away in a filthy, dark factory, and he’s trying to put you in a cage. But”-Kleingarten acted out the next part, grunting as he spoke-“you kick him in the nuts and run. You get to his little office and there’s a cell phone, right on the desk, like he wanted you to use it. You got no choice. You pick it up and call your only friend in the world-”

“I got lots of friends.” Her nostrils flared a little.

“Yeah, I know, but nobody else who understands. You know you’ve got less than a minute, tops, and how could you explain it all to anyone else?”

She nodded. “Yeah, in that case, it would be Wendy.”

Kleingarten hit the “Record” button. “So you pick up the phone, punch in her number and-”

“I don’t know her number. Not off the top of my head. I’d have to dig around in my purse. Unless it was my cell phone, then her number would be stored in it.”

“Okay, goddamn it, let’s say it’s your phone on the desk. You pick it up and get through and she answers and you go…” He pointed the recorder toward her face as the cue.

“Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”

“Hey, not bad, a little passion, a little fear, a little drama. What movies did you say you were in?”

“Nothing you probably heard of. Tommy Salami, Patti Cake Patti Cake, and Cherry Paradise.”

She’d named them with a perverse kind of pride. Kleingarten had heard of them, and had seen one, and now he knew why she looked familiar. “You did a lot of movies with food in them.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a glassy-eyed smile.

Kleingarten was angry now. He usually didn’t get too worked up over a job, even an enjoyable one, but she’d just shot down one of his little fantasies of how this would play out.

After remembering the disgusting things she’d done with those guys in that video-guys of every color in the rainbow-he wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. And that was a fucking shame.

“Can I have my pill now?” she asked.

He moved the hand with the vial behind his back. “Okay, now pretend he’s got you again, and you go, ‘Help me, hurry, we’re in the old factory where we killed Susan.’ Except rush the words all together.”